deficiency of Gray's Elegy in religious sentiment, which, in point of beauty and tenderness, may well compare with the sweet flowers of the English poet. While employed as editor, so carefully did he improve every leisure moment, that he would have his Greek grammar upon the table at the time of his meals. To see this young man as intently occupied in mental nourishment as he could be in his repast for physical nutriment, was often a subject of remark by his companions, and he soon became as familiar with that language as he was with Latin and French; indeed, his progress in study was so efficient, that he was admitted to college in advance of the customary period. He earned the expenses of his education at Columbian College, mainly as editor of the Columbian Star, established at Washington, in 1822. He had entered the Baptist Theological Seminary, at Philadelphia, in 1821, conducted by William Staughton, D. D., and Rev. Irah Chase. On taking his degree, December, 1824, he was elected a tutor of the college, which station he occupied until his ordination as pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Boston, Dec. 28, 1825. While a student at college, he delivered an oration, July 4, 1823, at the request of the Eusonian and the Ciceronian societies, which is a pure specimen of polite composition, breathing the fervor of chaste and patriotic sentiment. We glean from it this choice passage: "Montgomery has beautifully described Columbus, while meditating on his great expedition, as gazing with eager anticipation towards the new world which he hoped to discover. This bride our Pilgrim Fathers found on these unvisited shores. On her shady bowers no rude spoiler had intruded. None of the corruptions of the Old World had found their way into her bosom. She was worthy to be the bride of our forefathers, and to become the mother of a race of freemen." Of Mr. Knowles' published sermons, were one at the installation of Rev. Howard Malcom, Jan. 9, 1825, and another before the Boston Baptist Association, Sept. 16, 1829. In the same year, he published Memoirs of Ann Hasseltine Judson, missionary to Burmah,- a production which will render his name imperishable. In 1832 he was 1 elected Professor of Pastoral Duties and Sacred Rhetoric, in the Newton Theological Seminary, and his inaugural address on the Importance of Theological Institutions was printed. In 1829 he published also a Fast sermon, entitled "Spirituous Liquors Pernicious and Useless." Mr. Knowles, as a sermonizer, was so smooth and insinuating, that he captivated many, despite his distant and unsocial habits; but he was warm in his affections toward a few intimate friends. He was of such keen sensibility, that an unkind glance would offend him; and a base slander on his faultless habits probably induced him to leave the pastoral office. Is it not questionable whether the spirit of discipline, in many Baptist churches, is worthy the mantle of Roger Williams? He occupied the professorship, with close devotion and ability, until his decease, which occurred May 9, 1838, on his return from the Missionary Baptist Convention, at New York. His death was caused by a violent attack of the confluent small-pox; and, to avoid the contagion of his remains, they were laid in the grave at midnight. A devoted friend of Professor Knowles, residing at Newton, wrote the following effusion from the heart, on the impulse of the calamity: "They bore him at midnight alone midst the gloom In which night's sable pall had bound him; No solemn obsequies were sung at his tomb,- No tombstone we'd raise to emblazon his fame, — His memory, enshrined in the hearts of his friends, The influence he shed, as the dews which descend, The oration pronounced by Mr. Knowles, at the religious celebration of independence, in the year 1828, on the perils and safeguards of American liberty, clearly evinces that his tact as editor in the political field was equal to his ability in the more elevated sphere of divinity. The passage on the danger from ambitious and unprincipled political aspirants is worthy of any statesman. One of the strongest indications of the vigorous advance of biblical and classical literature in our republic is the establishment of quarterly periodicals in the principal religious sects, comprising contributions of the highest order of intellect. The Congregationalists have their Bibliotheca Sacra and the New Englander; the Unitarians have their Examiner, which, for refinement, rivals the North American; the Episcopalians have their Church Review; the Methodists have their Quarterly Review; the Lutherans have their Mercersburg Review; the Presbyterians have their Princeton Review; the Roman Catholics have their Brownson's Review; there is the Universalist Quarterly; and the Baptists have their Christian Review, radiating the light of Newton Theological Seminary. Professor Knowles was the first editor, on its establishment, in 1836, and exhibited in its management great learning and energy. The pastors of every church should advise their people to receive in their families the favorite quarterly of their denomination, as a powerful aid to religious and patriotic progress; and more especially should it be in the hands of every student in divinity. As the annalist of the life and times of Roger Williams, were James Davis Knowles a novitiate of Camden, or Leland, he could not have gathered around him a greater mass of antiquarian lore. He is the first extended biographer of this father of the doctrine that the civil power has no control over the religious opinions of men; and has elaborated a memoir that Robert Southey, of England, gave up in despair, for want of materials; and our own Jeremy Belknap, and more recently, Francis Greenwood, also abandoned, chiefly for similar reasons. The public good requires a new edition of this work, with additions; and no author can write a memoir of Roger Williams, without recourse to this production. Mr. Knowles remarks that the principles of Roger Williams are destined to spread over the earth. The State which he founded is his monument. Her sons, when asked for a record of Roger Williams, may point to her history, unstained by a single act of persecution, to her prosperity, her perfect freedom, her tranquil happiness; and may reply, in the spirit of the epitaph on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul's Cathedral, "Look around." It is pleasant to glance at this work. Roger Williams was banished by the General Court, Nov. 3, 1635; and often remarked of Gov. Winthrop, that, though he were carried with the stream for banishment, he tenderly loved him to his last breath. He first pitched and began to plant at Seekonk; and, in referring to his situation at this time, he wrote, alluding to the Indians: "God's providence is rich to his, Let none distrustful be; It was probably in the summer of 1636 that Roger Williams removed to the spot near the mouth of Washassuck river, beside a spring; to which, in grateful remembrance of "God's merciful providence to him in his distress," he gave the name of Providence. In 1648 Williams proceeded to England, and obtained, by the aid of Sir Henry Vane, a charter for the colony of Rhode Island. It was at this period that he wrote his celebrated work, entitled "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience," etc., in which he maintained the absolute right of every man to a full liberty in religious concernments. Mr. Knowles says that Williams is entitled to the honor of being the first writer, in modern times, who decidedly supported this opinion. Bishop Heber concedes this point to Jeremy Taylor, in the Liberty of Prophesying; but all the toleration urged by Taylor was for those Christians only who unite in the confession of the apostles' creed. There is a passage, however, in More's Utopia, written one hundred years before Williams' day, which is said to anticipate everything included in the principles of civil and religious liberty at the present day. But then Sir James Mackintosh questioned whether extravagances were not introduced, in other parts of Utopia, to screen the bold idea, and call the whole a rare sport of wit. Even Locke, in his Essay on Toleration, goes only for a limited liberty; and we must yield the palm to Roger Williams, as the first decided advocate. The origin of this work is too singular to be lost. A A person who was confined in Newgate, on account of his religious opinions, wrote a paper against persecution. Not having the use of pen and ink, he wrote the arguments in milk, on sheets of paper brought to him by the woman, his keeper, from a friend in London, as the stopples of his milk-bottle. In such paper, written with milk, nothing will appear; but the way of reading it by fire being known to his friend who received the papers, he transcribed and kept them. This essay was sent to Mr. Cotton, of Boston. He wrote a reply, of which Roger Williams' book is an examination. The title "The Bloody Tenet❞— is a fanciful reference to the circumstance that the original paper of the prisoner was written with milk. "These arguments against such persecution, and the answer pleading for it, written, as love hopes, from godly intentions, hearts and hands, yet in a marvellous different style and manner:- the arguments against persecution, in milk; the answer for it, as I may say, in blood." Mr. Cotton wrote a reply, to which he gave the quaint and punning title, "The Bloody Tenet Washed and made White in the Blood of the Lamb." Williams rejoined in the same strain: "The Bloody Tenet yet More Bloody, by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to Wash it White." Roger Williams enjoyed the personal friendship of John Milton and Oliver Cromwell, which no doubt had a tendency to rouse his ardor for universal toleration. He had a passion for poetry; and the specimens which his Key to the Indian Languages exhibits, though superior to much of the contemporary rhyme in Morton's Memorial and Mather's Magnolia, are inferior, in real poetic feeling and expression, to much of his prose writings. "I have heard ingenuous Indians saye, If debts of pounds cause restless nights, How hard's the heart that millions owes To God, and yet sleepe can? Debts paid, sleep 's sweete; Sins paid, death 's sweete; Death's night then 's turned to light; Who dies in sinne unpaid, that soul JOHN WARREN JAMES. MARCH 4, 1829. INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT JACKSON. In the spirited oration of Mr. James, we have an illustration of the fact that "the great body of the people of New England have exhibited a lofty and generous democratic spirit in every period of their political history, whether colonial or republican; and the endeavor to perpetuate the existence of aristocracy among our people was as clear under the royal race of the English Stuarts, as during the Confederation or the Revolution. At the time when King James the First, of England, was reproving his Parliament for presuming to meddle in matters of state above their capacity, forbidding his subjects in general even to discourse of such affairs, and the homilies of the church were inculcating passive obedience to the divine right of kings, |